Help me pick a laptop

[butterscott]

Okay so i just started a college and need a computer for schoool. Besides school i would like to use this laptop mainly for some light multi track recording, photo editing, and possibly some light gaming. My budget is around 600 dollars anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Wisecracker]

Here's a start: HP Pavilion dv6z-7000

$550 with the AMD Trinity Quad-Core A8-4500M (3.0GHz/2.1GHz) -- another $50 will get you an HD 7670M discreet for dual graphics

3 x USB3 (not sure how you do your audio stuff)

 

[butterscott]

would the amd A8-4500m be better than an intel i5 if they were the same price?

 

[jaguarskx]

Processor wise, a Core i5 would be more powerful. If your into gaming, then the Trinity APU would have the stronger integrated graphics.

 

[butterscott]

would the quad core amd be better than the dual core intel for recording music using protools and other software?

 

[jaguarskx]

If the programs you use can take advantage of more than 2 cores, then generally speaking it's better to go with a quad core Trinity APU.

 

[Wisecracker]

Also -- you should investigate how your audio/video software functions with OpenCL/GL. Trinity rocks GPGPU - i5s, not so much. Tom's has quite a number of articles on this.

However, some audio apps will tend to favor the Sandies (Lame, maybe?) as they generally run single-threaded.